


you’re a fine girl (what a good wife you would be)

by opensummer



Series: get down ladies, you've got nothin' to lose [2]
Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, F/F, Female Peter Quill, Gen, Women Being Awesome, does Ego even have pronouns?, serious question
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-27
Updated: 2017-07-27
Packaged: 2018-12-07 20:27:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,006
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11631276
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/opensummer/pseuds/opensummer
Summary: So here's the thing about Ego’s daughters- they’ve always been more dangerous than his sons.





	you’re a fine girl (what a good wife you would be)

**Author's Note:**

> Sequel to ch-ch-cherry bomb. Alternatively I got real drunk at the $3 cinema, figured out why my skin was crawling and decided to write fic about it.

Peter’s first thought when her father comes crashing into the scene, on a fuckoff rocket, breathing the void, is maybe a little unkind for a woman meeting her father for the first time.

_ What an asshole,  _ she thinks and punches the engines into a tailspin over a garden world. 

Later she thinks,  _ had to get it somewhere. _

Peter’s never been concerned with being  _ kind _ .

* * *

Her second thought, stranded on that planet, armed, and ready to fight, is that he looks a little like Snake Plissken. 

Then he opens his mouth.

* * *

Peter doesn’t have a dad, and if she did and Peter’s not saying that mind’, he’s Centaurian blue and ornery.  She’s honestly baffled by a father that doesn’t threaten to eat her every five minutes. 

Gamora is less than sympathetic.

* * *

This Peter in this world never told stories of David Hasselhoff. She didn’t dream of playing catch because no Quill girl would be caught dead playing football.

If she thought of her father at all it was to resent the absence of him.

What need after all does a daughter have for a father?

* * *

(If she thought of her dad at all she thought of Cardinal games in St. Louis. The perfect progression of a summer day, the hot dogs and her granddad getting steadily drunker, the crack of a bat as it connects into a popeye over left field, a thousand voices, maybe more, singing  _ peanuts and cracker jacks _ .)

(Peter wouldn’t have been allowed football but softball would have been just fine.)

* * *

So Ego says, “Come with me”. And Peter, Peter says “No.”

But only for a moment, ‘cause Gamora is thinking about the Infinity Stone and the way it shimmered in Peter’s hands.

Gamora is thinking about her father and what he’d do to a girl like Peter. 

Gamora let these people under her skin and now when you cut them, she bleeds. 

Gamora is always thinking about how to protect them. So she ignores the itch under her skin that says dangerous and leads her family right into this trap. 

* * *

On the ship Mantis compares herself to a flea and broadens the statement to contain the entirety of the galaxy and Gamora’s stomach sinks into a pit of her own making. 

(On the ship Mantis lays hands on Peter, bares her soul and Gamora nearly snaps her in half for the audacity.)

* * *

Elsewhere, Rocket is telling Yondu Udonta that his sins have caught up with him. 

* * *

So here's the thing about Ego’s daughters- they’ve always been more dangerous than his sons.

A thing like Ego with a little more self reflection might have squinted sideways and figured out why. 

* * *

Peter is thinking about the crack of a bat on clear summer day when her father tells her to find the Light.

It’s the only thing she can think of. A bat manifests in her hands, and she swings it, easy as can be.

Ego loses his mind with excitement and asks about baseball, ( _ never Meredith’s favorite sport,  _ he says with a twist to his lips), pulls a ball from thin air and throws it in the soft easy lob of a parent teaching a kid. She doesn’t even think to resent him for it as she swings and hits, the bat shuddering in her hands, and the ball goes flying in a perfect parabolic arc towards the horizon.

Homerun.

* * *

So Ego’s daughters have always been more dangerous than his sons. They recognize what he is a little quicker than the boys, fight back a little harder when he lays hands on them. 

Some of his daughters took one look at the planet and tried to run. 

Ego’s daughters have dealt with men like him before. They’re not so hard to recognize if you know what you’re looking for- and that long white hall full of plastic loves is damn good sign.  

* * *

Gamora always thought they’d end up here. Her and Peter. Her and Nebula.

She’s known from the beginning how this family ends. Gamora is only grateful that it is not  _ her _ father who screws this up for them.

* * *

Her father says “You know this song is about me?” (Not “us”. Not is this world. Ego’s daughters have always been more dangerous than his sons.) 

_ he came a on summers day  _

“And you Peter are a gift.”

_ bearing gifts from far away  _

“Your mother knew right from the start that I wouldn’t stay”

_ but he made it clear he couldn’t stay _

That little corner of the Light she’s only just discovered is roaring and the whole world is falling away. Ego crushes her walkman. 

“But of course-”

_ my life, my love, my lady is the sea. _

Before Peter disappears, she thinks he’s forgotten the next verse, for her father is no honest man. 

* * *

Starry-eyed, containing multitudes, Peter can the see the shape of the galaxy spreading out before her. The Light of her father touches every corner of the galaxy. Peter has never been more certain of her course. 

It’s a monstrous thing that certainty. 

Peter knows before Ego ever says it, how could she not?

Right now she is Ego. 

_ What’s so wrong about that? _

* * *

And then of course Ego says it.

“It broke my heart putting that tumor in your mother’s brain.”

And the whole world slides sideways and Peter wants to be _good_ remember?

So she fires until she’s out of bullets and then her dad, the one she wanted calls her girl and tells to stop overthinking things. 

So Peter does. 

* * *

“I’m Mary Poppins y’all!”

Practically perfect in every way right?

* * *

She loses two fathers in one day but only mourns one of them. 

The Ravagers fly the Ogord colors. Gamora leans into her side and says _ just some unspoken thing. _

Nebula is already long gone.

When Peter dies, they’ll fly them for her too and she will die, now. The last corner of the Light had slipped out of her grasp with the detonation of the bomb. She’s just like everybody else now.

_ What’s so wrong about that? _

**Author's Note:**

> SO fun facts- the Cardinals actually won the world series the year Peter was born and Kurt Russel played Snake Plissken in Escape from New York which Peter was probably to young to see but could conceivably have stumbled on it on late night when Meredith was dying.
> 
> I'm on [tumblr](http://openemptysummer.tumblr.com/) come say hi. 
> 
> Next one of these I write is probably going to be a Peter + Nebula teamup god help us all.


End file.
